


Déchaîner

by orphan_account



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Body Horror, Corporal Punishment, Gen, Self Flagellation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-17
Updated: 2014-06-17
Packaged: 2018-02-05 00:02:55
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1798168
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“You will say that I might have handed in my resignation, but that does not suffice. Handing in one's resignation is honorable. I have failed in my duty; I ought to be punished; I must be turned out.— if I were not severe towards myself, all the justice that I have done would become injustice”</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Javert punishes himself for falsley accusing the mayor of being a convict.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Déchaîner

**Author's Note:**

> This is a Kink Meme response. I don't think it turned out exactly how the original requester intended. Sorry about that.

If there was one thing to be said for Claude Javert, it was that he held himself to the same impossible standards he held the rest of the world to. Raised in a women’s prison until he was old enough to be of use, and then in the galleys until he was an adult, Javert was not innocent to the depravities which men are capable of.

Javert knew of the hypocrisy of many of those who professed to uphold the law. His mother, not only a fortune-teller and a bohemian, was also a fallen woman in every way it was possible to fall. Often, she would offer herself up to guards and other prisoners in exchange for some small comfort for her and her son. Looking back, it barely surprised him that both sides of the law could be equally licentious.

Weekly, for as long as the sins of his parents followed him, Javert was flogged by his jailers along with the rest of the inmates. Afterwards, he thanked them, sincerely, for teaching him to choose to be good. He began to see the flogging as his weekly confession. As each stripe was taken out of his naked back, he was forgiven. Though religion was somewhat lacking in the hell of his youth, Javert held his sacrament ritual faithfully.

After he was finally let out, an adult capable of either choosing vice or virtue, Javert chose to be the enforcer of the law that none of his role models had quite managed to be. He blamed that softness on their upbringing. Few of the guards could claim to know what it was like to be a criminal. They were there for a bit of coin and the complete power they wielded over the prisoners’ lives. Javert did not care about them. He only cared about the law, the only truth in his life.

It was difficult to continue his sacrament without the help of the guards, but Javert managed. He had lacked tools, at first, but in his line of work they were easy to come by.

After his massive misjudgment of Monsieur Madeleine, somehow he thought he could seek penance from an outside source. He was mistaken. The mayor rejected him, refused his apology, refused to help him wipe away his sins. Refused his need.

Javert cursed his own selfishness.

It was not the duty of the mayor to insure that his inspectors had a clean conscience. His failings lay on his own head and his reliance for salvation could only rest on the law. No one else was needed.

Coming into his meager apartment, Javert removed his hat with an exhalation of breath that revealed the sob in his throat. He unpinned his badge, and began unbuttoning his coat as he lit the lanterns in his room. The air was chill and abandoned as a tomb. Dust had settled in the time he’d been away, but he didn’t notice such things, so intent was he on his redemption.

By the time he reached his bed, Javert was absent all the trappings of the law that hid the man beneath. His dark skin, crisscrossed with pink scars, was bared to the room as it had been many times before.

In the feeble light, Javert filled a bowl with still water, splashing his face and viciously scrubbing it with a rough cloth. Once his face felt sensitive, slightly raw, he stopped, setting the cloth back onto dusty wood, and backing away. He fell abruptly on the bed kicking off his boots and socks, slowly opening his pants pushing them down. Once he was completely bare, Javert spent a moment staring at the light, wishing for its warmth as his breath turned to sooty smoke around him.

Unable to completely force away the images of his day, Javert ran his fingers gently down his face, chest, and thighs. He closed his eyes, paying attention to his own self. Once he reached as far as he could he changed directions, pulling his hands back up against the hair that was beginning to grow back.

After a few more explorations, Javert reached under his bed for a small bag that was filled with a few innocuous items. He reached inside and pulled out a simple pair of steel tweezers. Without the aid of a mirror, he held the tweezers to his throat and started methodically pulling out any hairs he could find there. The sensitive skin stung a bit at the rough treatment, but long practice had numbed him to any real reaction to the hair being pulled out by the root. After each gathered bunch was pulled, he wiped the dirty tweezers against his bed sheets.

He traveled down his chest, some areas barely capable of feeling the sensation of pulling, while others smarted just a very little bit. When he reached the bottom of his torso, Javert smiled. His pubic hair had been largely untouched. He liked to leave it that way so that when times like these came he would be unused to the sensation of ripping clumps of hair out of his most sensitive skin.

Javert preemptively bit his bottom lip, as he gathered a clump of hair at the very top of his genitals. Making sure the tweezers were clamped quite tightly, he wrenched them as quickly as he could away from his body, years of practice allowing him to suppress the whimper that threatened to be released. Before the burning could fade, he brought his implements back for another round. He was not gentle with the sensitive skin, and by the time he reached his testicles, involuntary tears had welled in his sinful eyes.

The loose skin of his sac followed the tweezers, causing a full body flinch. Javert swallowed a whimper, and allowed the trembling first tear to fall, silent down his face. The salty water stung slightly on his bare chest, and Javert reached for a second pull.  Swallowing down his frantic urge to move at a faster pace, Javert took his time in between each ripping sensation to explore with gentle fingers to find the next area to be cleared. The hazy light mixed with tears completely blinded him to the process.

Finally, after what seemed like hours, Javert was finally clean, his whole body cleared of disgusting, wiry hairs. At that point, he took a breath, and finally sat up. Reaching into his special bag, he replaced the tweezers and pulled out a leather thong. He was ashamed to need it, but after years of use, it was part of his ritual. He gently looped the thong about his scrotum, twisting it over the shaft of his penis twice before tying it off, forcing the offending organ into a permanent downward position.  Sometimes he couldn’t believe he lacked the self-discipline to control his own body, especially during his punishments, but he had long known that when the human spirit failed, there were other options for obedience.

The next object out of the bag was his discipline. He had knotted each of the cords himself, and in times of trouble ran his fingers over the knots like the beads of a rosary, thinking on the virtues he had sworn to uphold. Now, with each knot he touched he thought of his sins. He thought of his doubt against Monsieur Madeline, his obsession, and his desire to turn an upstanding citizen in without any sort of questioning. The man was strong, but how many strong men must make up the population of France?

Javert slipped off the bed, kneeling on the rough wooden floor, scooting forward so he was well out of the way of the furniture.  He was thirty four this year.

Thirty four was a good number.

Holding the cattail whip in both hands, Javert slowly brought it to his right, stilling once he had reached as far back as he could. In an explosion of motion, he brought the whip around to the other side, the cords curling around his upper arm and slapping at his back with all the speed their length allowed.

“One.” Javert smiled.

By four, he was gritting his teeth, but still smiling.

By nine, his erection was straining against its vicious restraint.

By twelve the smile was forgotten and his back was completely red.

At sixteen, he broke the skin, but he did not notice, because the drops of blood mingled with the sweat that had already beaded up on his skin despite the cold air.

By twenty-four he was barely able to speak real words, because opening his mouth led only to sobs escaping. He whispered twenty-five and twenty-six, switching sides so his back would be equally bruised.

The tension in his arms by thirty was causing a full body tremble. But he could not stop. He would have bruises on his arms from the knots hitting them again and again. As intended.

At thirty-four he could not drop the discipline in relief, because his hands had frozen into claws around the handle. He tried to unclench his fingers, but couldn't, so he focused on breathing in through his nose, swallowing the snot mixed with tears that had to be cleared out to make room for stale air.

Instead of dropping the whip, Javert dropped his head to the floor in a kind of prayer. His mind was clear of all the unwanted images of his sins, floating free at last.

His tears on the floors were tiny confessions. Tomorrow, his conscious would be clear.

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks for reading! Please drop a comment to let me know what you think. I did a lot of really weird research for this, so hopefully I don't die tonight and have cock-cages and female prison laws from the nineteenth century as my last internet history results. :/


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